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Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for Dec.31, 2020
He seeks more black
men to teach in Philly and beyond
Inquirer by
Kristen A. Graham, STAFF WRITER, Posted: December 30, 2016
Sharif
El-Mekki vividly recalls every black male teacher who ever taught him: two in
elementary school, two in high school. "They were transformative figures
in my life," said El-Mekki, a veteran Philadelphia educator. For 2017,
El-Mekki has a goal to organize 1,000 black men to show up for the first day of
school, encouraging city youth to be their best. By 2025, his goal is much
loftier - to double the number of black men teaching in the city. To that end,
he has launched The Fellowship: Black Male Educators for Social Justice. Nationally,
just 2 percent of the teaching force is made up of black men. In Philadelphia,
the numbers are better, but still low - last year, fewer than 400, or about 5
percent, of Philadelphia School District teachers were black men. The
Fellowship has three aims: to hold periodic convenings of black male educators,
to influence education policy, and to expand the pipeline of black male
teachers.
“Fix special education funding: …The
state’s 501 school districts boosted their special education spending by $2
billion between 2009 and 2019, but state aid during that same period grew by
just $110 million, concludes the Dec. 3 report by the Education Law
Center and PA Schools Work, citing the most recent state data.”
Five things the
Legislature can do to make Pennsylvanians’ lives measurably better in 2021 |
John L. Micek
PA Capital
Star By John
L. Micek December 30, 2020
In just a
few days, lawmakers in the state House and Senate will be sworn into office,
kicking off a two-year legislative session that, if past is prologue (and it
almost always is), will be replete with bridge and bypass renamings, votes to
declare June the official month of something-or-other, and plenty of partisan
sound and fury signifying nothing much at all. But if 2020, for all its horror,
pain, trauma and frustration taught us anything at all, it’s that government,
when it functions at its best, can move swiftly and reasonably efficiently to
do the most good for the largest number of people. As I
observed back in April,
congressional authorization of the CARES Act was an affirmation that government
can move affirmatively to make people’s lives measurably better. And once that
door was thrown open, there are fewer excuses not to do it again. It’s also a
truism that the Legislature, whose mitts are in almost every sector of life
here in the Commonwealth, is best-positioned to improve the lives of nearly 13
million Pennsylvanians as the level of government that’s closest to the people.
And, as my friend and colleague Jan Murphy, of PennLive, reported
earlier this week, lawmakers did just that, as they enacted a
law cracking
down on human trafficking, among
other measures. As the Capital-Star’s
Stephen Caruso reported back
in July, lawmakers also approved, and Gov. Tom Wolf signed, a suite of police
training and hiring reforms that were a first step on a much longer road. So as
the 203 members of the House and 50 members of the Senate get ready to return
to work in 2021, here are a few modest suggestions on how they can best channel
their energies to do the maximum amount of good right away.
“We know that the current charter
funding mechanism forces school districts to overpay cyber charter schools and
overpay for charter special education costs by hundreds of millions of dollars
each school year.”
OP-ED: Pa. schools
are bleeding cash while students receive substandard education
York
Dispatch Opinion by Eric Wolfgang, PA School Boards Association December 29,
2020
Eric
Wolfgang is president of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
Since the
COVID-19 pandemic hit, there has been a huge increase in cyber
charter school enrollment across the country, including
in Pennsylvania, where cyber charter school enrollment is
up by 63% to 62,000 students as of Oct. 1,
2020. This trend should have Pennsylvania parents and taxpayers
extremely concerned for two glaring reasons. First, this enrollment increase
will have financial implications for school districts. To put this
impact into numbers, school districts can expect as much as a $350 million
dollar increase in their cyber charter tuition bills this year alone due to the
pandemic-generated cyber charter school enrollment increases. It’s important to
keep in mind that this massive sum is only part of the overall $475 million
overall charter school tuition increase this school year that school districts
are facing in addition to navigating through a global pandemic. The $475
million increase in charter school tuition this school year effectively
nullifies the majority of the federal funds public schools received under the
CARES Act. This means most of those funds will not have their intended impact —
to aid our public schools in a time of crisis. Moreover, for many districts,
their Act 1 index rate will not allow for them to increase property taxes to
cover the gap in increased charter school payments, leaving hopelessly unbalanced
budgets.
“Final briefs in the suit are due Jan.
8, a few days after senators are to be sworn in.”
Brewster vs.
Ziccarelli: Legal wrangling continues over state Senate seat
JULIAN ROUTH
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette jrouth@post-gazette.com DEC 30, 2020
The
Democratic state senator from McKeesport whose electoral victory rests on a
federal court case over a few hundred ballots asked the court to dismiss his
opponent's suit Wednesday. Lawyers for Sen. Jim Brewster and the Pennsylvania
Democratic Party argued in a motion that Republican Nicole Ziccarelli's claims
— that he's not the rightful winner of the race for the 45th Senatorial
District — are moot because the state already certified him as the winner, and
that Ms. Ziccarelli had "failed to exhaust Election Code procedures to
prevent that certification." Ms. Ziccarelli, who lost by 69 votes in the
November, is suing Allegheny County's board of elections over its counting of
ballots that were missing dates on their outer declaration envelopes, but were
otherwise correct and received on time. She wants the court to toss those
ballots, 202 of which went to Mr. Brewster and 108 to herself — enough to flip
the race in her direction, hypothetically.
Erie School District
to get $28 million in aid in new COVID-19 relief bill, tops in region
Ed
Palattella Erie Times-News December 30, 2020
The newly
passed federal COVID-19 relief bill provides about four times as much funding
for K-12 schools as did the first coronavirus relief bill that Congress passed
in March. The increase in funding for schools means a big boost for the Erie
School District, which is continuing its financial recovery, and other
school districts in the region. The Erie School District, the largest in
northwestern Pennsylvania with about 11,000 students and a budget of $210
million, will receive $27,756,501 in aid under the new $900 billion relief
legislation, according to preliminary estimates that Republican state senators
in Harrisburg received this week. The Erie School District received $6,761,026
in aid through the previous legislation, the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid,
Relief and Economic Security Act. The Erie School District is still reviewing
the new legislation to determine how the district can spend the new $28 million
in aid, but the bill, which Congress passed on Dec. 21, allows for a wide
range of uses, including improving buildings and educational programs to meet
the demands of teaching children during the pandemic. The legislation also
allows school districts to use the money to stabilize programs that have
suffered during the COVID-19 outbreak due to revenue shortfalls and other
issues.
The PIAA dropped the
COVID ball. Here’s a common-sense plan for winter and spring sports | Opinion
Lehigh
Valley Live By Joseph Roy Express-Times guest columnist Updated Dec 30, 2020; Posted Dec 30,
2020
On Dec. 9,
with a post-Thanksgiving coronavirus surge on top of the fall surge wreaking
havoc, the board of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association held
a closed-to-the-public executive session. People attuned to high school sports
assumed the private session would include discussion of the frightening virus
spread and whether winter sports should be postponed until after the holidays.
To the surprise of many, the PIAA board failed to take a public vote on the
most important issue facing high school athletics in the state — whether or not
winter sports should be postponed. The executive session discussion followed by
no vote spared the PIAA board from making a public decision about winter
sports. The following day, it was left to Gov. Tom Wolf to suspend all sports
activities until Jan. 4. The PIAA’s decision-making throughout this crisis does
not engender confidence that the PIAA represents the concerns of schools during
this pandemic. Prior to the Dec. 9 meeting, the PIAA executive director
received letters from both the Pennsylvania Principals Association and the
Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators (PASA, the superintendents’
group) calling for the PIAA to postpone winter sports. The PA School Boards
Association (PSBA) also supported postponing the start of the season.
Gov. Wolf announces
high school sports will be allowed to resume next week
Bucks County
Courier Times by Matt
Allibone York Daily Record December 30, 2020
There will
be a winter high school sports season in Pennsylvania after all. Gov. Tom
Wolf announced Wednesday that a number of state-wide restrictions put in place
three weeks ago to curb the surge in coronavirus cases will be lifted next Monday at
8 a.m, as originally planned. That includes the stoppage of youth and high
school sports competitions and practices. That means the PIAA will be
allowed to resume practices this upcoming Monday, Jan. 4. Teams will need
to get in at least four practices before they resume competition, which means
the earliest most teams will begin play is next Friday or Saturday. Other
restrictions on businesses, gathering limits and fitness centers will also be
lifted. Wolf said the state-wide positivity
rate for the virus has reduced for the second week in a row and the number of
new coronavirus cases reported each day has "plateaued." "This
does not mean we're out of the woods. Not by any means," Wolf said.
"We still have significant mitigation efforts in place." Wolf
acknowledged it will be "months, not weeks" until the general
population has access to coronavirus vaccines.
Mayor Jim Kenney
appoints 3 new Philly school board members
Inquirer by
Kristen A. Graham, Posted: 42 minutes ago
Mayor Jim
Kenney on Wednesday named an engineer, a lawyer and a longtime activist for
students with disabilities to fill three vacancies on the nine-member
Philadelphia School Board. Kenney selected Lisa Salley, Reginald Streater, and
Cecelia Thompson. All three are Philadelphia School District graduates;
Streater is a current district parent, and Thompson’s child recently graduated
from the school system. “I am proud to appoint these new members to the school
board and believe they each will bring a valuable set of skills and diverse
experiences to the table,” Kenney said in a statement. “I was inspired by their
passion for public education and their eagerness to take on this critical work.”
If approved by City Council, the three would fill vacancies that emerged this
year on the unpaid panel that controls a $3.5 billion budget and oversees the
education of more than 200,000 children.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-school-board-district-mayor-kenney-20201230.html
Mayor Kenney
nominates three new members to Philadelphia school board
Chalkbeat
Philly By Dale
Mezzacappa Dec 30, 2020, 1:58pm EST
Mayor Jim
Kenney nominated
three new members to the Board of Education Wednesday,
choosing a pioneering scientist, a long-time special education advocate, and an
attorney active in the American Civil Liberties Union. These appointments would
round out the membership of the nine-member board, which has operated with at
least one vacancy since April. The City Council must now vote whether or not to
approve the mayor’s selections. All the appointees are Black, and Streater will
be the only male on the board if all receive the Council’s okay. The new
appointments, all graduates of the Philadelphia district, are Lisa Salley, a
metallurgical engineer and business executive who lives in Germantown; Reginald
L. Streater, an attorney on the board of the local ACLU and parent of two
district students; and Cecelia Thompson, the mother of a 22-year-old with
autism who recently graduated from the system. Philadelphia is the only
district in the state where the school board is appointed by the mayor, rather
than elected.
“Overall, of Pennsylvania’s 17 counties
with the largest number of college graduates, 12 went for Biden. All are
predominately white. Montgomery, Centre, Allegheny, Bucks, and Delaware
counties are ranked second through six. Next were Montour, Dauphin,
Northampton, Leigh, Lackawanna, and Erie counties ranked 10, 11, 12, 14, 16,
and 17, respectively.”
In elections,
education, like demographics, is now political destiny | Mark O’Keefe
PA Capital
Star By Mark
OKeefe December 31, 2020
Opinion
contributor Mark O’Keefe, of Mechanicsburg, Pa., is the former editorial page
editor of the Uniontown Herald-Standard.
Americans
are more divided politically now than at any time since the Civil War. Democrats
mostly live in cities or nearby suburbs. Republicans live primarily in small
towns and rural areas. Democrats also are more generally more affluent than
Republicans, who are drawing more low-income residents, especially under
President Donald Trump. Another big difference is that white college graduates
are increasingly voting for Democratic candidates, especially for president.
That’s a significant change from 25 years ago when most college-graduates were
Republicans. The political website fivethirtyeight.com noted
that in the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which President-elect Joe Biden recaptured,
voters were deeply divided by education, particularly among white voters. The
website noted that across the most highly-educated counties in these states,
including some populous suburban areas — Biden improved substantially on
Clinton’s margins.
Are schools safe? A
growing body of evidence suggests that, with the right measures, they
contribute little to virus spread.
There is
growing evidence that opening schools contributes little to coronavirus spread.
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio reopened schools for young students on
Dec. 7.
Washington Post
By Moriah
Balingit Dec. 30, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EST
When
panicked administrators shut down schools in the spring, little was known about
how the coronavirus could spread among students and
teachers. Could children fall critically ill and spread it to peers and
teachers, like the flu? Would asymptomatic young people pass it on to their
parents or educators? More than nine months after schools closed, some of the
answers to those questions are becoming clear. Emerging data on contact tracing
— which illuminates the origins of infections — shows that the virus does not
seem to spread much within schools when they require masks, urge social
distancing, have good ventilation and when community spread is low. But because
of a lack of a cohesive federal response, huge gaps in the data remain, and
many say new information about school transmission is not sufficient to make
far-reaching conclusions. A dearth of data has plagued many aspects of pandemic
response, and it has left governors, school superintendents, school board
members and parents on their own to interpret the shifting body of knowledge as
they make decisions that could affect the lives of everyone connected to school
communities. This, coupled with soaring infection rates, has made these
decisions especially fraught as school officials weigh whether to reopen their doors
next month.
Trump’s School Choice
Executive Order: A Big Nothing
Deutch29
Blog by Dr. Mercedes Schneider December 29, 2020
On December
28, 2020, President Donald Trump issued this
executive order to purportedly allow federal Community
Services Block Grant (CSBG) funds to be used to finance
“emergency learning scholarships” (school vouchers) “to disadvantaged families
for use by any child without access to in-person learning” This executive
order will go nowhere.
First, there
is no time for the Department of Health and Human Services create an
application process specific to this school voucher purpose and to
process new grant applications for states or entities and for
those states or entities to establish processes to identify and distribute
funds to qualified individuals and for those individuals to
locate private schools or other qualifying services, either before the school
year ends (we’re a semester in) or before the Trump presidency ends. Second,
even if states and other entities are allowed to redirect current CSBG funding
toward Trump’s eleventh-hour voucher flash-in-the-pan, doing so would mean just
that– taking money designated for other purposes– which is bureaucratically
easier said than done in justifying the reallocation, actually redirecting the
money, and establishing a process for its disbursement for a new purpose– and,
again, the clock is running out on both the 2020-21 school year and the Trump
presidency. This school choice executive order appeared on December 28, 2020,
the day after Trump
signed the latest COVID relief bill, which did not include the school voucher
funding exiting US ed sec Betsy DeVos wanted. Also on December 28, 2020, DeVos
publicly lamented the absence of voucher funding in the
COVID relief bill. According
to USA Today, DeVos was in on drafting this go-nowhere
executive order:
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2020/12/29/trumps-school-choice-executive-order-a-big-nothing/
Calls are growing for
Biden to do what DeVos did: Let states skip annual standardized tests this
spring
Washington Post
By Valerie
Strauss Dec. 30, 2020 at 2:54 p.m. EST
There are
growing calls from across the political spectrum for the federal government to
allow states to skip giving students federally mandated standardized tests in
spring 2021 — but the man that President-elect Joe Biden tapped to be education
secretary has indicated support for giving them. The issue will be an early
test for Miguel Cardona, the state superintendent of education in Connecticut
whom Biden picked for education secretary, and his relationship with teachers
and others critical of giving the exams during the coronavirus-caused chaos of the 2020-2021 school year. The
current education secretary, Betsy DeVos, approved waivers to states allowing
them not to administer the annual exams last spring as the coronavirus pandemic
led schools to close. She said recently she wouldn’t do it again, but Biden’s
triumph in November’s elections means the decision is no longer hers. It’s up
to Cardona — assuming he is confirmed by the Senate, as expected — and the
Biden administration to decide whether to provide states flexibility from the
federal law.
PSBA Webinar: New
Congress, New Dynamics
JAN 14, 2021
• 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
The 2020
election brings significant changes to the 117th U.S. Congress. How will the
newly sworn-in senators and representatives impact public education? What
issues will need to be addressed this session? To become an effective
legislative advocate you’ll need to understand the new players and dynamics.
Our experts will profile key new members, discuss what big trends you can
expect and highlight the issues that will be debated over the next two years.
Presenters: Jared Solomon, senior public advisor,
BOSE Public Affairs Group
John Callahan, chief advocacy officer, PSBA
Cost: Complimentary for members.
Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CQkk1Sd0QmOhdJ3VmlSzGg
https://www.psba.org/event/new-congress-new-dynamics/
Adopt the 2020 PSBA resolution
for charter school funding reform
In this
legislative session, PSBA has been leading the charge with the Senate, House of
Representatives and the Governor’s Administration to push for positive charter
reform. We’re now asking you to join the campaign: Adopt the resolution: We’re
asking all school boards to adopt the 2020 resolution for charter school
funding reform at your next board meeting and submit it to your legislators and
to PSBA.
Resolution for charter funding reform (pdf)
Link
to submit your adopted resolution to PSBA
337 PA school boards have
adopted charter reform resolutions
Charter school funding reform continues to be
a concern as over 330 school boards across the state have adopted a resolution
calling for legislators to enact significant reforms to the Charter School Law
to provide funding relief and ensure all schools are held to the same quality
and ethics standards. Now more than ever, there is a growing momentum from
school officials across the state to call for charter school funding reform.
Legislators are hearing loud and clear that school districts need relief from
the unfair funding system that results in school districts overpaying millions
of dollars to charter schools.
https://www.psba.org/2020/03/adopted-charter-reform-resolutions/
Know Your Facts on Funding and Charter Performance. Then
Call for Charter Change!
PSBA Charter Change Website:
https://www.pacharterchange.org/
The Network for Public Education Action Conference has
been rescheduled to April 24-25, 2021 at the Philadelphia Doubletree Hotel
Any comments contained herein are my comments, alone, and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of any other person or organization that I may
be affiliated with.
